Dance of the Seven Veils: A Comic Strip in Seven Episodes on the Life of Richard Strauss

Ken Russell – 1970 – England

The last of Ken Russell’s many films made for the BBC since the early 60s, Dance of the Seven Veils is also the angriest and most extreme; clearly more an anticipation of virulent extravaganzas like The Devils (1971) and Lizstomania! (1975) than a resolution to the buoyant black-and-white docu-dramas of the TV years; such as The Biggest Dancer in the World (1966) and Song of Summer (1968).  Former ballet dancer Christopher Gable, a regular in Russell’s films from this period, plays the German composer Strauss as a vain libertine who is barely comprehending of the role his music is playing in world events, thanks to its embrace by Hitler and the Third Reich.  A veteran of the RAF during WWII, Russell was pre-occupied with Nazi imagery in his films of the 70s, often inserting anachronistic swastikas and goose-stepping soldiers into stories involving Mahler and Wagner.  Some have interpreted Dance of the Seven Veils as a rare case of Russell critiquing an artist for his dubious politics, or at least for a refusal to accept any social responsibility.  This may be true, but I tend to see this film as one of many examples in Russell of an artist being victimized by events that he couldn't possibly anticipate or control.  Strauss’ epicurean vision of healthy Aryan beauty in the clean mountain air seems to start out innocently enough, much more an aesthetic value than anything ideological.  But his sharing in the common hope for a Nietzschian “superman” in the post-WWI era, combined with Hitler’s rise to power, leads Russell to condemn him in this film as the man who wrote the soundtrack for WWII and the Holocaust.  Needless to say, Strauss’ family and estate were not delighted with Russell’s interpretation, and it is their legal injunctions that have kept the film out of circulation all these years.  Most importantly, Dance of the Seven Veils is Russell’s formal announcement that he will thenceforth take no part in the sanitized, respectable presentations of history that the BBC and mainstream films in general certainly preferred.  His films would be loud, brash and visceral, and utterly annoying to middle-brow critics.